Drug cartel leader asserts poor treatment in prison

People who live in Florida and are accused of crimes should always be able to trust that their rights will still be protected even while they are in jail or prison. This is an essential tenet of the laws and the entire criminal justice system in the United States. Unfortunately, it seems that defendants do not always receive the level of treatment or respect they deserve as human beings.

An example of this can be seen in the case of a man commonly known as El Chapo. The man has been pursued and identified as the leader of a major drug business based in Mexico since the early 1990s. According to a report from The New York Times, the man was convicted earlier this year on 10 different felony counts related to money laundering, drug offenses and murder. He has been in custody in the U.S. since 2017 after he was captured in Mexico and then extradited to the U.S.

Between his transfer to the U.S. and his recent sentencing, the defendant has asserted that he has endured sub-human living conditions that have been essentially torturous on him emotionally, mentally and psychologically. He has been in solitary confinement and alleges that he has not even had access to clean water at times. It is not known if the authorities holding him have attempted to disagree with his accounts of the conditions or not.

He has now been sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison and may be transferred to a different prison but no details of the conditions there are known.